Trends in Hearing最新文献

Participation in complex listening situations such as group conversations in noisy environments sets high demands on the auditory system and on cognitive processing. Reports of hearing-impaired people indicate that strenuous listening situations occurring throughout the day lead to feelings of fatigue at the end of the day. The aim of the present study was to develop a suitable test sequence to evoke and measure listening effort (LE) and listening-related fatigue (LRF), and, to evaluate the influence of hearing aid use on both dimensions in mild to moderately hearing-impaired participants. The chosen approach aims to reconstruct a representative acoustic day (Time Compressed Acoustic Day [TCAD]) by means of an eight-part hearing-test sequence with a total duration of approximately 2½ h. For this purpose, the hearing test sequence combined four different listening tasks with five different acoustic scenarios and was presented to the 20 test subjects using virtual acoustics in an open field measurement in aided and unaided conditions. Besides subjective ratings of LE and LRF, behavioral measures (response accuracy, reaction times), and an attention test (d2-R) were performed prior to and after the TCAD. Furthermore, stress hormones were evaluated by taking salivary samples. Subjective ratings of LRF increased throughout the test sequence. This effect was observed to be higher when testing unaided. In three of the eight listening tests, the aided condition led to significantly faster reaction times/response accuracies than in the unaided condition. In the d2-R test, an interaction in processing speed between time (pre- vs. post-TCAD) and provision (unaided vs. aided) was found suggesting an influence of hearing aid provision on LRF. A comparison of the averaged subjective ratings at the beginning and end of the TCAD shows a significant increase in LRF for both conditions. At the end of the TCAD, subjective fatigue was significantly lower when wearing hearing aids. The analysis of stress hormones did not reveal significant effects.

There is broad consensus that listening effort is an important outcome for measuring hearing performance. However, there remains debate on the best ways to measure listening effort. This study sought to measure neural correlates of listening effort using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in experienced adult hearing aid users. The study evaluated impacts of amplification and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on cerebral blood oxygenation, with the expectation that easier listening conditions would be associated with less oxygenation in the prefrontal cortex. Thirty experienced adult hearing aid users repeated sentence-final words from low-context Revised Speech Perception in Noise Test sentences. Participants repeated words at a hard SNR (individual SNR-50) or easy SNR (individual SNR-50 + 10 dB), while wearing hearing aids fit to prescriptive targets or without wearing hearing aids. In addition to assessing listening accuracy and subjective listening effort, prefrontal blood oxygenation was measured using fNIRS. As expected, easier listening conditions (i.e., easy SNR, with hearing aids) led to better listening accuracy, lower subjective listening effort, and lower oxygenation across the entire prefrontal cortex compared to harder listening conditions. Listening accuracy and subjective listening effort were also significant predictors of oxygenation.

In recent years, tools for early detection of irreversible trauma to the basilar membrane during hearing preservation cochlear implant (CI) surgery were established in several clinics. A link with the degree of postoperative hearing preservation in patients was investigated, but patient populations were usually small. Therefore, this study's aim was to analyze data from intraoperative extracochlear electrocochleography (ECochG) recordings for a larger group.During hearing preservation CI surgery, extracochlear recordings were made before, during, and after CI electrode insertion using a cotton wick electrode placed at the promontory. Before and after insertion, amplitudes and stimulus response thresholds were recorded at 250, 500, and 1000 Hz. During insertion, response amplitudes were recorded at one frequency and one stimulus level. Data from 121 patient ears were analyzed.The key benefit of extracochlear recordings is that they can be performed before, during, and after CI electrode insertion. However, extracochlear ECochG threshold changes before and after CI insertion were relatively small and did not independently correlate well with hearing preservation, although at 250 Hz they added some significant information. Some tendencies-although no significant relationships-were detected between amplitude behavior and hearing preservation. Rising amplitudes seem favorable and falling amplitudes disadvantageous, but constant amplitudes do not appear to allow stringent predictions.Extracochlear ECochG measurements seem to only partially realize expected benefits. The questions now are: do gains justify the effort, and do other procedures or possible combinations lead to greater benefits for patients?

Inattention plays a critical role in the accuracy of threshold measurements, e.g., when using mobile devices. To describe the influence of distraction, long- and short-term inattention models based on either a stationary or a non-stationary psychometric function were developed and used to generate three simulated listeners: fully-, moderately-, and non-concentrated listeners. Six established adaptive procedures were assessed via Monte-Carlo simulations in combination with the inattention models and compared with a newly proposed method: the graded response bracketing procedure (GRaBr). Robustness was examined by bias and root mean square error between the "true" and estimated thresholds while efficiency was evaluated using rates of convergence and a normalized efficiency index. The findings show that inattention has a detrimental impact on adaptive procedure performance-especially for the short-term inattentive listener-and that several model-based procedures relying on a consistent response behavior of the listener are prone to errors owing to inattention. The model-free procedure GRaBr, on the other hand, is considerably robust and efficient in spite of the (assumed) inattention. As a result, adaptive techniques with desired properties (i.e., high robustness and efficiency) as revealed in our simulations-such as GRaBr-appear to be advantageous for mobile devices or in laboratory tests with untrained subjects.

This systematic literature review explored the relationship between hearing loss, the use of hearing aids or cochlear implants, and late-deafened adults' perception and appreciation of, and participation in, music. To identify articles, four databases were searched, MEDLINE, Scopus, Embase, and American Psychological Association (APA) PsycINFO, using terms associated with hearing loss, hearing aids, cochlear implants, music perception, appreciation, or participation. The included studies were empirical, written in English, peer reviewed, used any research method, had no date restrictions, and involved late-deafened adults. A formal risk of bias evaluation was undertaken using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal tools. A double-blind review of 2595 articles was completed in June 2023, with a total of 131 studies meeting the inclusion criteria. Typically, the reviewed articles focused on music perception testing. The studies included more than 6900 adult participants with hearing loss. Data relating to the review question were extracted and thematically coded. Only 18 studies reported on music experiences for adults who had hearing loss with or without hearing aids. The remaining 113 articles related to cochlear implant users, and 91 of these focused primarily on identification of musical structural components. The reviewed articles consistently established that hearing loss and hearing devices have a substantial, generally negative, impact on music perception. The psychosocial and emotional need for music was mostly overlooked, with few studies focusing on music appreciation, enjoyment, social connectedness, or participation. Further research is needed to understand the broader context of how hearing loss and hearing devices impact personal experiences including mental and physical well-being and quality of life.

This multi-center study examined the safety and effectiveness of cochlear implantation of children between 9 and 11 months of age. The intended impact was to support practice regarding candidacy assessment and prognostic counseling of pediatric cochlear implant candidates. Data in the clinical chart of children implanted at 9-11 months of age with Cochlear Ltd devices at five cochlear implant centers in the United States and Canada were included in analyses. The study included data from two cohorts implanted with one or two Nucleus devices during the periods of January 1, 2012-December 31, 2017 (Cohort 1, n = 83) or between January 1, 2018 and May 15, 2020 (Cohort 2, n = 50). Major adverse events (requiring another procedure/hospitalization) and minor adverse events (managed with medication alone or underwent an expected course of treatment that did not require surgery or hospitalization) out to 2 years post-implant were monitored and outcomes measured by audiometric thresholds and parent-reports on the IT-MAIS and LittlEARS questionnaires were collected. Results revealed 60 adverse events in 41 children and 227 ears implanted (26%) of which 14 major events occurred in 11 children; all were transitory and resolved. Improved hearing with cochlear implant use was shown in all outcome measures. Findings reveal that the procedure is safe for infants and that they show clear benefits of cochlear implantation including increased audibility and hearing development.

This study investigates the effect of spatial release from masking (SRM) in bilateral bone conduction (BC) stimulation at the mastoid. Nine adults with normal hearing were tested to determine SRM based on speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) in simulated spatial configurations ranging from 0 to 180 degrees. These configurations were based on nonindividualized head-related transfer functions. The participants were subjected to sound stimulation through either air conduction (AC) via headphones or BC. The results indicated that both the angular separation between the target and the masker, and the modality of sound stimulation, significantly influenced speech recognition performance. As the angular separation between the target and the masker increased up to 150°, both BC and AC SRTs decreased, indicating improved performance. However, performance slightly deteriorated when the angular separation exceeded 150°. For spatial separations less than 75°, BC stimulation provided greater spatial benefits than AC, although this difference was not statistically significant. For separations greater than 75°, AC stimulation offered significantly more spatial benefits than BC. When speech and noise originated from the same side of the head, the "better ear effect" did not significantly contribute to SRM. However, when speech and noise were located on opposite sides of the head, this effect became dominant in SRM.

Most neural models produce a spiking output and often represent the stochastic nature of the spike generation process via a stochastic output. Nonspiking neural models, on the other hand, predict the probability of a spike occurring in response to a stimulus. We propose a nonspiking model for an electrically stimulated auditory nerve fiber, which not only predicts the total probability of a spike occurring in response to a biphasic pulse but also the distribution of the spike time. Our adaptive leaky-integrate and firing probability (aLIFP) model can account for refractoriness, facilitation, accommodation, and long-term adaptation. All model parameters have been fitted to single cell recordings from electrically stimulated cat auditory nerve fibers. Afterward, the model was validated on recordings from auditory nerve fibers from cats and guinea pigs. The nonspiking nature of the model makes it fast and deterministic while still accounting for the stochastic nature of the spike generation process. Therefore, the relationship between the input to the model or model parameters and the model's output can be observed more directly than with stochastically spiking models.

Subjective reports indicate that hearing aids can disrupt sound externalization and/or reduce the perceived distance of sounds. Here we conducted an experiment to explore this phenomenon and to quantify how frequently it occurs for different hearing-aid styles. Of particular interest were the effects of microphone position (behind the ear vs. in the ear) and dome type (closed vs. open). Participants were young adults with normal hearing or with bilateral hearing loss, who were fitted with hearing aids that allowed variations in the microphone position and the dome type. They were seated in a large sound-treated booth and presented with monosyllabic words from loudspeakers at a distance of 1.5 m. Their task was to rate the perceived externalization of each word using a rating scale that ranged from 10 (at the loudspeaker in front) to 0 (in the head) to -10 (behind the listener). On average, compared to unaided listening, hearing aids tended to reduce perceived distance and lead to more in-the-head responses. This was especially true for closed domes in combination with behind-the-ear microphones. The behavioral data along with acoustical recordings made in the ear canals of a manikin suggest that increased low-frequency ear-canal levels (with closed domes) and ambiguous spatial cues (with behind-the-ear microphones) may both contribute to breakdowns of externalization.

Older adults with normal hearing or with age-related hearing loss face challenges when listening to speech in noisy environments. To better serve individuals with communication difficulties, precision diagnostics are needed to characterize individuals' auditory perceptual and cognitive abilities beyond pure tone thresholds. These abilities can be heterogenous across individuals within the same population. The goal of the present study is to consider the suprathreshold variability and develop characteristic profiles for older adults with normal hearing (ONH) and with hearing loss (OHL). Auditory perceptual and cognitive abilities were tested on ONH (n = 20) and OHL (n = 20) on an abbreviated test battery using portable automated rapid testing. Using cluster analyses, three main profiles were revealed for each group, showing differences in auditory perceptual and cognitive abilities despite similar audiometric thresholds. Analysis of variance showed that ONH profiles differed in spatial release from masking, speech-in-babble testing, cognition, tone-in-noise, and binaural temporal processing abilities. The OHL profiles differed in spatial release from masking, speech-in-babble testing, cognition, and tolerance to background noise performance. Correlation analyses showed significant relationships between auditory and cognitive abilities in both groups. This study showed that auditory perceptual and cognitive deficits can be present to varying degrees in the presence of audiometrically normal hearing and among listeners with similar degrees of hearing loss. The results of this study inform the need for taking individual differences into consideration and developing targeted intervention options beyond pure tone thresholds and speech testing.